Not a tremor, not a word of consolation. Three days previously, she would have leaped to his neck and said: "How happy we shall be! I have you back; I have found you again! What joy!"
Again, she would have tried to console him had he been suffering.
Now, she remained passive, frozen, indifferent to that news.
"We shall leave the Hôtel Beauvau!" said Sulpice.
"I am already preparing to leave," she replied. "My trunks are packed."
"Will you do me the kindness of leaving here with me and of going back to Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin with me?—After that, you can set out at once for Grenoble. But let us have no sign of scandal. The world must be considered."
She had listened to him coldly, unmoved by his trembling voice.
"That is proper," she said ironically. "The world must be thought of. I will wait then before leaving."
He was stupefied to find so much coldness and so unswerving a determination in this woman, as gentle as a child—my wife-child, he so frequently said to her of old. In her presence he felt ill at ease, discontented, hesitating whether he should throw himself at her feet and wring pardon from her, or fly from her and be with Marianne, perhaps forever. But no, it was Adrienne, his poor, his dear Adrienne that he would keep and love! Ah! if she pardoned him! If he had dared to kneel at her feet, to plead and to weep! But this living corpse froze him, he was afraid of her, of that gentle and devoted creature.
He went downstairs again, saying to himself that he would take a hurried dinner and then go to Rue Prony.